What do you do?  When I was a psychologist, nobody asked. When I was a retailer, nobody asked. But now that I'm a computer consultant people are always asking, "Just what is it that you do?"  The next few pages try to answer that question -- sort of.

I say "sort of" because what I do depends on what my clients need, on what I enjoy doing, on what's profitable, and more than anything else, on what's happening in the fast-paced world of computing. Today's answer is just that -- good for now but subject to change.

The best way to tell you what I do is to tell you about a typical client. Elyse Piken and Marsha Held, the principals of Property Tax Adjusters, Ltd. on Long Island, New York came to me, like most of my clients, by referral. Thanks to the much-appreciated energetic referrals of my initial clients in this niche market, I do a lot of work with people in the property tax reduction field.

Elyse and Marsha had been in business, quite successfully, for several years and were using computers in their offices when we met. Now they were interested in a more powerful system that would handle more clients and increase their productivity. After determining which work products they could profitably automate, I surveyed their existing equipment and specified a major upgrade for Marsha's computer and a brand new one for Elyse's office, shown in the photo at right.

Had their requirements been unusual, I would have personally built the equipment for Elyse and Marsha, but in this case it was more cost-effective to have an Acer-authorized shop build it to my specifications. Freed of building the hardware and installing the Windows 95 operating system, I could concentrate on the things that really count -- rigorously testing and benchmarking the equipment, configuring it for automated self-maintenance, and installing the software that customized the equipment.

The next page goes into more detail about configuring the equipment.